dang what is the deal with little kids doing these debates. they need to have a kid section on this site because im sick of having debates with children who think their parents logic is perfect. lol ill digress to get to the topic at hand. this is quite simple and it shouldnt really be debatable. no matter what you believe there are thousands of beliefs out there that contradict your beliefs. so only far less than .1 percent of people can be right about their beliefs. these beliefs come with no evidence which is why we call them blind faith. its irrefutable people are credulous. if they werent most people would have the same beliefs and then id still call them credulous if they still had no evidence or premises for those beliefs. as the con side kido you will have to explain what evidence or premises christians and buddhists etc. have and how their beliefs can all be true.

First of all, I would like to remind my opponent that the BoP lies on Pro as he made the claim. I also remind my opponent that while this debate had been put in the religion category, it does not have a religious topic. Instead my opponent merely uses arguments pertaining to religion to support his claim, and only made the statement "you will have to explain what evidence or premises christians and buddhists etc. have and how their beliefs can all be true" after I accepted. Therefore I will not be limiting myself to religious grounds (nor ignoring it), and I urge my opponent to do the same.

Credulous as defined by Dictionary.com is "willing to believe or trust too readily, especially without proper or adequate evidence; gullible." Note that while my opponent focuses on the terms 'without ... evidence; gullible' [1], the definition included the phrase 'too readily', which implies a repeating pattern. A similar phrase is present in multiple other trusted online dictionary sources [2]. Indeed, for a trait to be part of an individual (which the word 'are' in the topic backs up as the definition of the claim) and not merely present it has to be dominating. Therefore, to make the claim that "Most people are credulous", the claim that "Most people are credulous most of the time" has to be made first. The evidence and statistics my opponent provides, then, (and may I add are without source or evidence) are not enough to prove that statement, in the same sense that we don't call someone a liar if they had lied twice in their life.

Now, my opponent seems to assume that all individuals who believe in a religion believes based on 'whatever their leaders recommend' and utilizes no evidence. The truth is vastly more complicated on several counts. I will now present several exceptions to my opponent's claim.

Religion aren"t cults. There are no definite leader(s) for all believers of any certain religion. Many believers believe of their own accord, without relying on a leader to know what to believe. The simplest and most verifiable example being myself, as I am a christian yet believe based off my own choices rather than what my parents or any church leaders tell me.

There is a distinction between 'credulous' and 'ignorant'. In this context, credulous is believing in something with little to none evidence, while ignorant is believing in something with lots of evidence, but all the wrong ones. An individual may believe in a religion with many fallacies, yet still not be credulous, as they believe that the evidence they"ve been provided is enough for a rational belief, even if they seem ridiculous to others. Pro fails to regard this possibility in his arguments.

Pascal's Wager is an argument made by Blaise Pascal in the 17th century [4] on the rational choice of believing in God in order to not risk the possibility of losing infinite eternal gain or vice versa, should it happen to be true. In this case individuals who abide by this principle are not credulous, as they do not believe "readily", the decision came after extensive rational thought, they acknowledge the lack of evidences, and they are certainly not gullible.

I will now provide a argument of my own. As I said earlier, for an individual to be classified as credulous the trait must be dominant. Yet our society functions on non-credulousness. From grocery shopping to crime courts, we require credibility. In a credulous society, criminals will be released based on their statements of innocence, and costumers will spend a fortune for an ordinary rock just because they are told so. Thus our society cannot have most of its individuals be credulous.

I look forward to my opponent"s rebuttal and to learn from a fellow debater.

My opponent has unfortunately forfeited his round due to uncontrollable circumstances and has challenged me to another debate with the same topic. I extend my previous arguments to this round and continue the debate over on the new debate. Voters may feel free to not vote for this debate.

lack of education isnt a lack of intelligence. people like me cant over think things we can only underthing things. people like you probably should under think things because if you think them through you'll make up your own views that contradict your religion like virtually all of you have. and racism, gay bashing, and other horrible things set in like the idea that animals are less than human and that this makes them less deserving so locking them up forever in a tiny cage after clipping their wings is acceptable. a bird that can fly around the world. you lock it in a box. just because they cant express their suffering doesnt mean they dont suffer. its no different than slavery. same things happen to them. they are tortured. more than people like to know. its a fact that most people subconsciously ignore negative information to uphold an inaccurate optimistic view of the world. you also refuse to think about bad things and bad possibilities and maintain a pma. lol glass is half full if you will. well im here to tell you the glass isnt always half full. violence in the school is on the rise as is the drop out rate. that is half empty. people no longer own slaves and gays are allowed to marry in some places less people are racist. thats half full. if the glass is spilling into some fat guys mouth i call it half empty. if he is filling it up id call it half full. youll prolly be too stupid to understand and all youll talk about is how this guy had the grammar of a 5th grader. lets see if he can refute my points.

ok dude. america takes in people of other countries but still 83 percent of americans claim to be christians. ill get to the statistics and all that after someone accepts the debate. didnt want to give too much away in my opening argument because i didnt want to prove my point before the debate starts otherwise nobody will accept this debate. i was hoping to get some dumb a christian i can make look stupid and pretty much any christian will do. lol

do i have to? its general knowledge that over 90 percent of the religious people in every country believe whatever their country has passed down to them and do not believe religions of other countries. if im debating someone so ignorant that they dont already know that ill forfeit and let the poor bsterd beileve whatever they want to believe

Reasons for voting decision: The BOP is on pro and he doesn't offer a single argument. He just goes on a rant. Con actually offers evidence that our society as a whole acts in a rational manner and not one out of gullibility. We have to make logical arguments in order to persuade large sects of the population. The justice system, for example, is a good example of a large portion of our society not being credulous. Thus, I vote Con because (1) Pro did not come anywhere near fulfilling his BOP and (2) Con actually offers arguments in support of his position. Conduct for FF--Pro dropped all of Con's points making them true

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